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I’m on the eve of my 19th birthday; seems somehow unbelievable to realize how fast it all happened and yet it’s stoking to see what lies ahead. This year would go down as undoubtedly the best year of my life so far; not because I got admitted to a rather good university, nor because of certain worldly things but mostly because I got to know myself and really became well acquainted with who I truly am.

As an eighteen year old, I went through a lot but I what I learned and gained that I’ll never forget, was a certain attitude towards life – that helped me take everything all in stride – which comprises a few internal principles, some hedonistic approaches, reformation of beliefs and the refinements of sketchy ideas about my future.

Developing a set of principles happened over time and in my opinion, was only effective when I actually felt the need to confine myself within some boundaries for my own good. The amazing thing was that as time passed by, me and the principles became one – probably because the principles were in conformity with my character – and I no longer sensed that I was abiding by certain rules but that I was just being myself, expressing my opinions and doing things they way I liked. It also gave me a sense of directedness; I knew what I wanted to do and how to do it.

I also felt the urge to lead a happier life and in the course of digesting this idea and attempting to attain a few milestones I learned that happiness is in the moment and then I read a wonderful quote from Albert Camus that curtly says it all: “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Just like any other person who is interested in the unknown, I figured that I need to know what I truly believe in when it comes to God and religions and now after days deliberation, I finally know what I believe in. As with the afterlife, I do not know what happens after I die but there is one thing that I’m absolutely certain about; when I die the only thing that I leave behind in this world is my memories, so I intend to leave behind some reasons to be missed.

Now, I almost know who I am and who I want to be and the previously hazy image of my future is now much clearer thanks to the best year I’ve ever lived.

Last night I was sort of down and depressed. I was lying in my bed, looking at the ceiling and thinking about my life, particularly my life as a high school student. I didn’t really dig the high school atmosphere and I was constantly thinking about how wonderful my life is going be after I graduate but shockingly, despite everything I just said, I never thought I would miss high school in less than two years after my graduation. And then I asked myself, “Is it gonna happen again?”

I’m the kind of person who always tries to do his best to enjoy the moment and live without regrets and that’s my underlying mind set. Nevertheless, despite all my efforts to live without regret, just like any other human being, I too feel like I could have acted differently and lived a better and more satisfying life. The important thing that needs to be mentioned is that I can only understand this, say, shortcoming with my current knowledge and experience which is attained directly because of being under those previous circumstances. It’s somehow like a vicious circle, you experience something and then you realize what you did wrong, you learn from it and then you feel like it would have been really cool if you could go back in time and do something differently.

For instance last night, as I previously mentioned, I was thinking about how better, cooler and more awesome my life would have been if I had my current knowledge and understanding of life back when I was in high school. As a sophomore, I couldn’t to keep my life balanced because I had so many things that I needed to do on a regular basis ( 9 hours of school, 3 hours of Basketball and 2 hours of English every other day), I couldn’t get enough sleep and couldn’t take care of myself and felt constantly exhausted. As a junior, I didn’t study as well as I should have, was constantly deprived of sleep because of talking or texting my girlfriend for three hours straight every freaking night and generally didn’t have a productive year and also spent a lot of time being sad and depressed.

Now that I think about all those things that I did and the situations and opportunities that I had I feel like I missed out on something. I feel like I really should have spent more time on certain things, I should have been a better student, a better athlete, a better son and a better person. I should have been wiser, more tactful and much , much happier. Come to think of it, I actually had the potential for all those things. Most importantly I shouldn’t have spent even an hour being sad or depressed because now I feel like I utterly wasted those precious moments and they will never come back.

After realizing what I had gone through, I asked myself is this going to happen again? Am I going to think that I could have lived a much better life just two years from now? Am I going regret my actions once again? and then I started to feel… enlightened. I realized that obviously, two years from now, there are going to be some things that I feel I could have done differently but what matters is how I approached my life when I actually did those things. Did I feel happy? Did I enjoy what ever it was that I was doing? Did I do things according to my moral and life principles? These are going to be a few questions that I will undoubtedly ask myself in the near future and the main objective is to feel good and satisfied about the answers of these questions.

The lesson that it taught me was to live my life to the fullest, act in compliance with my principles, never waste time, never do the things that I don’t like and always, always look at my life, not from my own perspective but from the perspective of an old man looking back at his life. I learned that I should never be sad and depressed because I will regret frittering away my precious moments.I learned to treasure each and every second of my life and finally I learned that even though regret is inevitable it’s important to able to learn from it, move on and give life all you got just to make sure that you did everything you could have possibly done.

I suggest you listen to the song, Time from the movie Inception while you read this post. It makes it more memorable, more enlightening if you will.

I am frustrated.
If you are curious as to why I am frustrated then let me enlighten you with a short story.
So here it goes.
After many years of endless efforts I had finally managed to get a three-week traveler’s visa to the United States. I decided to go to Boston and see the magnificent University of Harvard. When I got there I met a student of English literature named Matt and I decided to make some inquires about his curriculum and what he did on a regular basis in the University. Here is what he told me: “We have a lot of different stuff that we do, we also have a wide array of choices in terms of what we want to study. We read a variety of things such as old English, Middle English, satires, tragedies and comedies, sermons and literature from different centuries in general. We go to field trips every now and again and we get to know each other more and we also get to communicate with our professors.
You know, it’s not like high school anymore where you had to go to some place, study and come back home. Here, we get involved. We try to learn as much as we can, as good as we can. We really try to push ourselves. After all, this is what we are passionate about, right? By the way, what do you do in your University?”
At first I felt embarrassed to tell him the truth; nonetheless, I decided to be frank, and here is what I told him: “Well, we go to the University three days a week. What we do on the first day is that we memorize a twelve-line text and then we learn ten to twelve new words and after that we talk about some quotations. On the second day, we study how to study and after that we talk about phrases and quotations and finally review the ten to twelve words that we studied the day before. On the third day we memorize something else.” (Not to mention that while telling these, I tried to sound as sophisticated as possible)

And that’s when it hit me. In that very moment I realized how far away I was from where I wanted and expected to be. I knew that this was not what I was hoping for after I graduated from high school and this is probably the reason why I always have a guilty conscience when I’m leaving the University because I know that I have learned nothing worthy of the time that I have spent. I want to be educationally fulfilled when I’m in the university so that when I get home I can feel good about myself, knowing that I truly deserve to be called a student and don’t get me wrong here; I’m not trying to criticize the professors. I’m sure that they are merely victims of this ignorant and uncreative educational system that has no regard for individuals and their educational progress.

People often ask me about what creates the system in an attempt to tell me that we- and by we I mean us, students and the professors- are liable for what is happening to us right now and yes, we are responsible but only to a degree. We and our ambitions make the system but what forms our ambitions is very significant. We are result oriented rather than process oriented because of what our society forces on us. In a society that everything requires a diploma or a degree, it’s difficult to care about the process of obtaining that certification, thus the more we focus on the destination rather than the journey, the more we deviate from what we are truly supposed to be (good students). For instance it’s almost impossible to find a good, well paid job without an academic degree ( even if you are truly competent) in our society; yet we all know plenty of successful multi-billionaires in other countries who barely attended college like Bill Gates, Michael Dell or Mark Zucherberg.

What boggles my mind is when people tell me to read lots of books to satisfy myself and clear my conscience, well that’s an alternative but then what would be the point of going to university? Don’t we get into universities to have a productive, inclusive and satisfying experience while gaining the abilities to later provide for ourselves and the society? At least I think, this is how it’s supposed to be.
All I’m trying to say is that this is not what we really wanted to do as a student of English literature, is it?

Today, I decided not to be passive any more. You see I was like water, I easily agreed to take the shape of the bowl that I was poured into, not because I had a submissive nature but only because I felt it was easier to fit in, rather than try to change the situation.

From now on, I’ve decided to do stuff and make things better for myself and people around me so I made this blog.

I’ll write about every single thing, things that should be discussed or shared. Cool stuff.